Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy

by John Spargo

Comrades, workmen, and soldiers! Our cry of alarm is addressed to all those to whom the work of the Soviets is dear. Know that a traitorous blow threatens the revolutionary fatherland, the Constituent Assembly, and even the work of the Soviets. Your duty is to prepare yourselves for their defense.

The Central Executive Committee, nominated at the October Congress, calls together for the 8th of January a Congress of Soviets, destined to bungle the Constituent Assembly.

Comrades! The Second Congress of Soviets assembled at the end of October, under conditions particularly unfavorable, at the time that the Bolshevik party, won over by its leaders to a policy of adventure, a plot unbecoming a class organization, executed at Petrograd a coup d'état which gave it power; at a time when certain groups with the same viewpoint disorganized even the method of convocation of the Second Congress, thus openly aspiring to falsify the results; at this same Congress the regular representatives of the army were lacking (only two armies being represented), and the Soviets of the provinces were very insufficiently represented (only about 120 out of 900). Under these conditions it is but natural that the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets chosen at the first election would not recognize the right of this Congress to decide the politics of the Soviets.

However, in spite of the protestations, and even of the departure of a great number of delegates (those of the Revolutionary Socialist fraction, Mensheviki, and Populist-Socialists), a new Executive Committee of the Soviets was elected. To consider this last as the central director of all the Soviets of the country was absolutely impossible. The delegates who remained in the Congress formed only an assembly of a group with a little fraction of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left, who had given their adhesion to them. Thus the Central Committee named by their Conference could not be considered except as representatives of these two groups only.

Bringing to the organization of Soviets an unheard-of disorder, establishing by their shameful methods of fighting its domination over the Soviets, some of which were taken by surprise, the others terrorized and broken in their personnel, deceiving the working class and the army by its short-sighted policy of adventure, the new Executive Committee during the two months that have since passed has attempted to subject all the Soviets of Russia to its influence. It succeeded in part in this, in the measure in which the confidence of the groups which constituted it in the policy was not yet exhausted. But a considerable portion of the Soviets, as well as fractions of other Soviets, fractions composed of the most devoted and experienced fighters, continued to follow the only true revolutionary road; to develop the class organization of the working masses, to direct their intellectual and political life, to develop the political and social aspects of the Revolution, to exert, by all the power of the working class organized into Soviets, the necessary pressure to attain the end that it proposed. The questions of peace and of war, that of the organization of production and of food-supply, and that of the fight for the Constituent Assembly are in the first place. The policy of adventure of the groups which seized the power is on the eve of failure. Peace could not be realized by a rupture with the Allies and an entente with the imperialistic orb of the Central Powers. By reason of this failure of the policy of the Commissaires of the People, of the disorganization of production (which, among other things, has had as a result the creation of hundreds of thousands of unemployed), by reason of the civil war kindled in the country and the absence of a power recognized by the whole people, the Central Powers tend to take hold in the most cynical fashion of a whole series of western provinces (Poland, Lithuania, Courland), and to subject the whole country to their complete economic, if not political, domination.

The question of provisioning has taken on an unheard-of acuteness; the gross interference in the functioning of organs already created for this object, and the civil war kindled everywhere throughout the country, have completely demoralized the provisioning of wheat in regions where they had none, the north and the army are found on the eve of famine.

Industry is dying. Hundreds of factories and workshops are stopped. The short-sighted policy of the Commissaries has caused hundreds of workmen to be thrown on the streets and become unemployed. The will of the entire people is threatened with being violated. The usurpers who in October got hold of the power by launching the word of order for a swift convocation of the Constituent Assembly strive hard, now that the elections are over, to retain the power in their hands by arresting the deputies and dissolving the Constituante itself.

All that which the country holds of life, and in the first place all the working class and all the army, ought to rise with arms in their hands to defend the popular power represented by the Constituante, which must bring peace to the people and consolidate by legislative means the revolutionary conquests of the working class.

In bringing this to your knowledge, the Central Committee chosen at the first elections invites you, Comrades, to place yourself immediately in agreement with it.

Considering the Congress of October as incompetent, the Central Committee chosen at the first elections has decided to begin a preparatory work in view of the convocation of a new Congress of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates.